Post navigation

BLAKE NEFF WROTE ABOUT 8000 CHINESE STUDENTS BEING EXPELLED FROM THE US.

80% WERE EXPELLED AS A RESULT OF POOR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OR CHEATING!!!

THAT IS 3%. THE TRAGEDY IS THAT I SEE SOME PLAGIARISTS EVERYDAY, EVERYWHERE. THEY JUSTIFY PLAGIARIZING BY SAYING THAT I SHOULD TAKE IT AS A COMPLIMENT THAT MY WORK WAS WORTHY OF PLAGIARIZING!!! THEREFORE, BY THAT LOGIC, MY LOSING SALES IS A COMPLIMENT? MAY I PLEASE PLAGIARIZE THEIR WORK AND NOT PAY THEM ROYALTY?

IF 8000 IS 3%, THEN imagine how many are still here. The professors here fight a losing battle because the Chinese students pay full tuition. (As someone who has never studied without a scholarship, I would never pay tuition. My logic is very simple: unless I am very good, I wont attempt to study it. If it gets my attention, I will work hard to be in the 95th percentile. BY THE SAME LOGIC, I DON’T PLAGIARIZE.)

My Chinese dorm-mate stole from me. As did a superior. When I filed charges, both of them said that this was a cultural difference, and that in China no one cares. Everyone takes from everyone else. I asked my dorm mate to steal from the Dean’s niece who was in a room across the hall. She was caught. I did not drop the charges. As for the superior, our lab got even.

You can fight one or two people stealing your ideas. How do you fight a nation or a culture?

Don’t get me wrong. One of my best pals from NYC, who died of a glioblastoma, was half Chinese.

My thesis is that plagiarism throttles innovation and creativity. IF some kid did not share a beautiful, elegant cancer drug idea fearing patent trolls and plagiarism, should you not be angry with this culture? Please share you plagiarism experiences. If you don’t comment, I will assume that you don’t mind this plagiarism.

As another blogger, Kally, recently said upon receiving another award, “to be singled out by the nominator who has a lot of readers and to be remembered” is, indeed, an honor. This time, the honor is doubly mine for having been nominated by, Eva PoeteX! I am most assuredly humbled, and strongly encourage you to visit her blog(s), Sought After Blood Lines, Eva PoeteX, and (one of which I had not been aware!) BeLove BeLieve. You will NOT be disappointed, I’m sure!

★ ★ ★

The Rules for Accepting This Award: 1. Tell how your blog got started. 2. Give some advice to new bloggers 3. Choose blogs that you would like to pass the award on to.

HOW DID I START BLOGGING?

I began blogging on WordPress a bit over three years ago, I think, and did so simply as one means of sharing…

We have many followers. My family members have 1.1k followers in 1 month on FB and so on. I don’t. I probably have 23.

On Twitter, its just activism. Still it does count. I have been very busy with some move related stuff.

I am about to drop the kinds of followers who: dont:

respond

comment

ask me about my day

come to my defense, subtly or not

talk TO me

How we break up says so much. I have the kind of friends who will pick me up at the airport at odd hours if needed, will substitute for me, will defend me. I do the same. for them. On social media you’d expect that people would ask about your day. Here and on twitter, I see that of my 400+ followers no one faves my tweets or asks me about my day. I can be an activist by myself. I am going to be volunteering with 2 NPOs.

I was asked to sign some petitions. My work said to do that from a diff computer. So I could not. Instead, I tweeted 10 times as much. I polled my other friends and found out that 90% found that very reasonable. The aim of a petition is to help undo an injustice. I accomplished more by publicizing the cause and petition site.

Amongst Aniplals, I tweet for animals. These tweeps dont, even once a week read my tweets, say hello, or read my blog.

If you wanted to work for shelters and some people ill-treated you, you would find another way to help animals.

I am more productive when I am with friends. Real ones. LOYAL, KIND PALS!

This weekend I spent time at the Exotic Feline Rescue Center near Brazil, Indiana. Most of the cats at the Center are tigers, due in part to the popularity of tiger ownership as a status symbol, as well as the obsession with breeding white tigers. Such breeding inevitably produces many non-white tigers, which then require sanctuary.

White tiger.

There really are very few places that one can get so close to big cats; in the wild it’s unwise, and in zoos there always seem to be greater physical barriers, whether through glass or moats or just sheer distance. The EFRC keeps the cats in wooded, fenced habitats. Some of the cats are quite affectionate, and would come up and rub their faces against the fence when our guide called them, just like ordinary kitties.

Others, though, behaved very much like one would expect wild tigers and lions to behave. I stood…

Love this! This author should write a book. Thank you! I remember reading these, mainly because my mom locked up all other books. What you have researched may hold some great answers to questions in potato farming! Polyploidy had always intrigued me.

A topical story in the Lima press
Overnight, there was an interesting and topical post (as far as I’m concerned) on the Facebook page of one of my ‘friends’—the son of one of my graduate students when I was a faculty member at The University of Birmingham in the 1980s. He hails from Peru. Carlos Arbizu Jr. is studying for his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and, as far as I can determine, he’s working on carrot genetics under the supervision of my friend and former potato scientist David Spooner.

Carlos had posted a link to an article published on the website of the Lima-based Newspaper Perú21: ¿Por qué estudiar un doctorado? (Why study for a PhD?). To which Carlos had added the byline: PhD = Permanent Head Damage.

Maybe he’s going through a difficult patch right now. I’ve seen from several of his posts that he’s immersed…